I’ve been following the story of Roxana Saberi’s Iranian trial and conviction, mainly through the thorough coverage in the Los Angeles Times (which you can find here and here) and the story is a chilling one. If you’re unfamiliar with Saberi’s case, here are the basics: she is a 31-year-old American reporter who was previously employed by NPR and the BBC before being accused of espionage in January. Her trial lasted exactly one day and the verdict was rendered immediately. I have to believe that President Obama was deliberately understating things when he said that he was “disappointed” by the trial’s outcome.

What was the evidence against Saberi? Nobody knows, as the trial was conducted entirely in secret. Apparently Saberi confessed, but said her confession was extracted under duress and due to false promises of release. If Saberi’s confession is indeed valid, why not make public any details of the case that could confirm her confession? Keeping everything under wraps in the way that Iran’s judicial system has can only bolster Saberi’s claim that this is a sham. The whole situation has been cast by several analysts as an Iranian attempt to possess a bargaining chip in their relationship with America.

Saberi, whose father was born in Iran, has been living in Tehran since 2003 and stayed there to continue reporting on affairs in the country even after the government revoked her press credentials in 2006. Yesterday, a day after the conviction, Iranian President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to prosecutors requesting the following: “Please, personally observe the process to ensure that the defendants are allowed all legal rights and freedom in defending themselves and that their rights are not violated even by one iota.” He then spent the rest of the day and speaking at a highly publicized UN forum on racism, in which his controversial statements got much airplay and hence more attention was paid to what else he had done that day, namely issuing this letter in the name of “legal rights and freedom.” Master manipulation. You can almost hear Ahmadinejad saying “eeeexcellent” in the sinister manner of Mr. Burns on The Simpsons.

The legal rights that Ahmadinejad mentions in his letter — could they perhaps include an open trial, or even pretending to deliberate on the evidence? I suppose that he could be trying to set himself up as some arbiter of fairness so that if/when Saberi is released, he can point to his letter as the handiwork that ensured her freedom. Forgive me for believing that such manipulations and diplomatic bargaining tactics should have no place in determining a woman’s innocence or guilt, and should never influence the decision to grant or deny her freedom.

To any readers who wish to read more about this, I recommend following the Los Angeles Times‘ coverage including this interview with Saberi’s father, which includes details such as Saberi’s attempted hunger strike and the fact that she was originally detained for buying a bottle of wine. The newspaper’s site also has an excellent blog on all things Middle Eastern called Babylon and Beyond.

7 Responses to “What Will Become of Roxana Saberi?”

Anytime journalists are detained, I get freaked out. This is especially disturbing because hey, she’s a person, not a bargaining chip. It’s like she’s being robbed of all her humanity in the name of-what, exactly? I don’t know. I can’t imagine what she’s going through.

I really pray that things are different for Roxana Saberi. If anything, Zahra’s death and the public outcry that followed might make the Iranian goverment more inclined to release Roxana, or at least prevent her from being brutalized in the same way.

@Becky: I hope things are different. I also hope that the current outrage will sustain itself beyond the 48-hour news cycle. Especially since Saberi is not, y’know, a white woman. There have been more than a few comments around the blogosphere that this should not be such a big deal because she’s Iranian (she’s American, but whatevs) and she’s a Muslim (I actually don’t know what her faith is, but that shouldn’t matter).

I also fear that in all the outrage yesterday over Ahmedinejad’s statements about Israel and racism, a story like this will just get buried. The MSM does not seem have the ability to focus in depth on more than one story coming out of Tehran (or even the Middle East at large) at any given time.

@PhDork: It is a great blog and far more impartial than most out there.

@JD: To be honest, I am not fluent enough in Iranian jurisprudence to attempt to answer that. I think the fact that she is foreign has influenced the fact that it even is an espionage case, which is their excuse for keeping it secret. But, as BeckySharper noted, this is not exactly the first time something like this has happened.

JDR, s.o.a.lg: since the revolution in ’79, Iran has had a particularly egregious human-rights record. Evin Prison, especially, has a nasty history of secret “trials,” mass executions and disappeared prisoners. (Although the Shah wasn’t exactly Ghandi, and SAVAK–the Iranian CIA–was a nefarious, shadowy force for a looooong time.)